Stairs to Nowheresville

She dreamed of musicians.

Not the sorts of musicians most girls her age dreamed of- those fey creatures covered in glittering grit, prowling upon stage, burning so brightly you could barely look at them before they burned out on toxins or tyranny or a bullet to the brain. They had their place, rock stars, but that place was not in her dreams.

No, she dreamed of a boy- a faceless boy, but a real boy- who might pluck at strings that would resonate with the vibrations in her soul. A boy whose ability on the guitar extended beyond a painful, stumbling butchery of Stairway to Heaven. A boy who played because he had to play, not because it might impress a girl.

A boy like that she could respect. A boy like that she could love. A boy like that would know that you can't buy your way out of this mundane life in this shit-hole town. A boy like that would know you have to play your way out, and keep playing, keep strumming, keep your head full of the music so that there wasn't room for anything else... but until he came she was a single note in need of some serious harmony. Until he came she couldn't progress, could only repeat her solitary cry, over and over. Until he came she wasn't music, she was just noise. And so she sat by the crumbling brick walls of her world and she fingered imaginary chords on green creeping vines, and she dreamed.


(Stairs to Nowhereseville)